Where Were You in 1979?

The final year of the 1970s witnessed epochal shifts in power that ushered in the modern world.

Jonathan Karl

May 3, 2013 2:57 p.m. ET

The 1970s seem destined to be a justly forgotten decade—a time of disco, stagflation and little of the social upheaval that defined the previous decade or the epic global changes of the one that followed. But Christian Caryl sees more than malaise when he looks at the 1970s; he sees one of history's great turning points. "With the passage of time," Mr. Caryl writes in "Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st...